Slavery is one of the most disgraceful pages in American history. The system existed in 1619-1865 and humiliated the dignity of black people, claiming them as the powerless free workforce. Though the Declaration of Independence of 1776 contained the point of abandoning slavery, many wealthy people were against it, and the system was preserved till 1865. Fredrick Douglas is one of the most famous Afro-American leaders of the XIX century. He was an abolitionist and one of the main figures of the anti-slavery movement in the USA. His book Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave, first published in 1845, is one of the most known autobiographical writings in the genre of slave narrative (Levine 2016). Slavery is the most humiliating notion that harms people’s dignity and prevents them from living a full life.
Since the narrative is an autobiography, it contains a lot of descriptions of the author’s personal experience. Fredrick Douglass was a slave himself, so he experienced all the hardships and humiliations he describes in the book. Born in Maryland, Douglass had to face slavery since his birth because his mother, as well as himself, was a slave. He barely knew his parents since his father was a white man and his mother worked twelve miles away: “She made her journey to see me at night, traveling the whole distance on foot…”1 He worked since his early years and almost did not know his parents since his mother died when he was four (Douglass 2018). Later he worked in the family of Hugh Auld, who made him work hard and put him under constant surveillance after his wife tried to teach the boy the alphabet. (Douglass 2018). Apart from that, Douglass experienced physical and emotional abuse from his other master Mr. Covey who beat slaves, mistreated and harassed them (Douglass 2018). Such experience has become one of the main reasons for his further escape and gaining freedom.
However, the successful escape could have been impossible without the education Douglass got during his early years. The conversation between his master Hugh and his wife that Douglass overheard showed him that education is the key to gaining freedom (Douglass 2018). That is why master Hugh prevented his wife from teaching the boy as he thought that educated slaves are harder to manage, so Douglass had to do that himself. Later he regards Hugh Auld’s words as “a new and special revelation” 2that showed him the way from slavery to freedom. Hence, the boy was inspired to study more, so he learned to read and write. The books that influenced him the most were a collection of spelling exercises and a study guide on public speaking, The Columbian Orator, published in 1797 (Levine 2016). The latter showed him what freedom was and what it was like to express opinions and views freely. Douglass also learned to write in order to write himself a pass to escape from slavery which he managed to do (Douglass 2018). Hence, education was the main reason for the author’s successful escape and further gaining of freedom.
Apart from that, Douglass compares slavery in urban and rural areas. The first difference between them concerns the fact that rural slaves usually worked on plantations and fields outside the household. Urban slaves, on the contrary, worked either in their masters’ households or in the factories. In addition, urban slaves had more opportunities to learn since they could observe white people and sometimes even communicate with them: “A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave on the plantation.”3 Working in the city has become one of the main reasons for Douglass’s successful education and further escape since there were white abolitionists or free black people who could help slaves escape.
To conclude, it is necessary to note that Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave is one of the main books of slave narrative that may help the general audience comprehend the notion of slavery. The author’s personal experience on the point only gives him credit since he knows exactly what he writes about. The book is not just an autobiography, it is a profound description of what the life of slaves looked like in America in the XIX century.
Bibliography
Douglass, Fredrick. 2018. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. BookRix.
Levine, Robert S. 2016. The Lives of Frederick Douglass. Cambridge, US: Harvard University Press.
Footnotes
- Frederick Douglass, The Lives of Frederick Douglass (Cambridge, US: Harvard University Press, 2018), 19.
- Frederick Douglass, The Lives of Frederick Douglass (Cambridge, US: Harvard University Press, 2018), 78.
- Frederick Douglass, The Lives of Frederick Douglass (Cambridge, US: Harvard University Press, 2018), 79.